A group of nine NIH-funded investigators representing five different departments requests funds to purchase a Bio-Rad MRC-1024 Confocal Microscope System to be housed within, and administered by, the Vision Science Research Center (VSRC) of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). A second group of users, whose research is funded from a variety of sources and each of whom would require 1% or less of the instrument usage, are listed in the application as well. The VSRC, which includes forty scientists distributes among eleven departments on the UAB campus, was recently designated as a UAB University Wide Interdisciplinary Research Center. The VSCRC has administered an NIH funded CORE Grant since 1979 and, therefore, has eighteen years of experience in maintaining facilities for, and providing services to, the research community at UAB. The affiliations of the investigators listed on this application include the Departments of Psychology, Cell Biology, Physiological Optics, (School of Optometry), Ophthalmology, and Medicine. Thus, the primary users of the requested instrument represent a broad cross second of the biomedical research community at UAB. Access to CLSM facilities is extremely limited on the UAB campus. The only unit is a eight year old Sarastro instrument located in the Department of Neurobiology. This instrument, which is available on a restricted basis, is unsuitable for many of the applications described in this proposal because of its age and technical limitations including the fact that the unit is configured with an older microscope which yields a very low optical transfer efficiency. The availability of an instrument such as the Bio-Rad MRC-1024 on the UAB campus would have a major impact on the research programs of the nine NIH-funded investigators listed as primary users and provided a needed resourced for the broader UAB biomedical research community.